Popular tech blogger Mark Orchant died of heart attack at 50

According to most people who knew him, Marck Orchant was a remarkable human being. Oliver from StarrTrek chronicled what happened:

"At some time between 7:30 and 8:10 AM on Sunday Morning December 2nd, 2007, Marc Orchant, my fellow author on this blog, as well as one of my closest friends sustained a massive heart attack while working in his home office.

According to Sue Orchant, Marc was up early Sunday morning as is his normal custom. Sue told me that he was working in his office from about 7:30 AM until 8:10 when Sue says she heard a strange noise in Marc’s office.

When she went to investigate she saw that Marc was not sitting in front of the computer like he normally does and was slumped over between his desk and a small couch that is in the room. Initially, Sue said, she though he was leaning over doing something to their Golder Retriever but then she realized that he was not conscious.

Fortunately, Sue has basic medical knowledge and after verifying that Marc was not choking and had a clear airway she began to perform CPR while their son, Jason, called paramedics. The ambulance arrived in less than 10 minutes and technicians immediately took over performing CPR and administered treatment with a cardiac defibrillator. Marc was rushed into emergency open heart surgery where an angioplasty was performed to restore circulation in the blocked artery.

Sue went on to tell me that in spite of Marc’s apparent good health, he has severe occlusion in both his other arteries and they too will require treatment soon. The primary concern and the question that cannot be answered until Marc regains consciousness is the nature or extent of any neurological damage as a result of insufficient oxygen reaching Marc’s brain."

Digital Inspiration posted a farewell tribute to Marc Orchant:



In medical school, I made up a mnemonic for some of the risk factors for CAD -- OBESE:

Obesity
Blood pressure (hypertension)
Elevated LDL, low HDL
Smoking
Elevated glucose (diabetes)

At least from the extensive blog coverage, it does not look like Mark Orchant had many of the risk factors listed above.

Related:
AltaVista Founder Dies of a Heart Attack at 42, CasesBlog, 2006.
Honoring the Memory of Marc Orchant. Micro Persuasion.
In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop. NYTimes, 04/2008.
Dangers of unrecognized heart disease: Husband dies while giving wife CPR (both found dead, age 60, 59) http://goo.gl/LZ39U